Thursday, March 05, 2009

I decided to try some of the bizarre-flavored snacks that are offered at the grocery stores before I move. When else will I get the opportunity to eat barbecue eel and seaweed corn sticks? Yesterday it was odd flavors of American snacks.

It started with American turkey flavored Cheetos. It didn't taste like turkey and it didn't taste like Cheetos, but it wasn't bad. After finishing off the small one-kuai bag, I was rather sick of it (appropriate size for the snack, I suppose).

Then it moved into something I knew should not exist--it's just an abomination of nature. I tried Lay's lychee potato chips. I passed up the blueberry flavor because I heard how awful that was. I can't imagine blueberry being any worse than lychee.

We chalked the awful taste up to the fact that foreigners are not the intended market. So I made Jia try it (she thought I was stupid for even considering buying such a snack). We then offered it to the staff at the Xinjiang restaurant. We couldn't find anyone who liked it. Who is the intended market of these horrifying flavors?

2 comments:

I've recently come across bone marrow flavoured baby food. I saw the herring flavour immediately before and thought fish an odd thing to feed babies, but then that was pushed out of my mind by the bone marrow. i know its supposed to be a nutritious thing to eat, but at that point if you're just out of the womb why not go a step further and make it placenta flavoured for a real comfort food.

and if the placenta thing is a bit too far, it only comes to mind because he grocery store has it in their 中药 section.

About The Waiguoren

A former foreign devil from New Jersey in a foreign land of 1.4 billion. Traveling the country, reading books, and watching movies fill in the days. Drinks and adventures abound in the gan bei world called China.